poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
Pot Is the New Normal
Face it: marijuana is legal, crime is down, traffic fatalities are declining and fewer teens are lighting up
In fact, sales and tax revenues from legal pot continue to climb and more people now buy recreational pot than medical marijuana, even though the former is taxed at much higher rates. Pot has kicked about $45 million into tax coffers since it became legal this year and is projected to come in between $60 million and $70 million by year’s end. Murders in the Denver area, where most pot sales take place, are down 42% (so is violent crime overall, though at a lower rate) and property crime is down 11.5%.
There’s more bad news for alarmists: Pot use by teenagers in Colorado declined between 2001, when the state legalized medical marijuana, and 2013, the last full year for which data are available. When medical marijuana was introduced, critics worried that any form of legalized pot would increase usage among kids, but the reverse happened. It remains to be seen if that trend continues in the face of legal recreational pot, but Colorado teens already use dope at lower rates than the national average. So much for the Rocky Mountain High state.
Yet Colorado pols are in good company in harshing on legal weed. The recovering addict and former congressman Patrick Kennedy heads up SAM (which stands for “Safe Alternatives to Marijuana”) and categorically argues, “we cannot promote a comprehensive system of mental health treatment and marijuana legalization.”
Researchers who find that regular marijuana use among teenagers correlates with mental problems, academic failure and other bad outcomes get plenty of ink, even though such studies fail to show causation. Underperforming students and kids with problems abuse alcohol and smoke cigarettes at higher rates, after all. In any case, even advocates of legalization argue that teens shouldn’t be smoking pot any more than they should be drinking. Given its pariah status for decades, it’s not surprising that the science is both unsettled and highly politicized.
Will legalizing pot increase access to a drug law enforcement officials concede has long been readily available to high schoolers? “Criminalizing cannabis for adults has little if any impact on reducing teens’ access or consumption of the plant,” argues the pro-legalization group NORML, a claim supported by declining teen use rates during Colorado’s experience with medical marijuana. Certainly, pot merchants who are registered with and regulated by the state are more likely to check IDs than your friendly neighborhood black-market dealer.
Cont -
http://time.com/3514137/marijuana-legalization-colorado-new-normal/
Face it: marijuana is legal, crime is down, traffic fatalities are declining and fewer teens are lighting up
In fact, sales and tax revenues from legal pot continue to climb and more people now buy recreational pot than medical marijuana, even though the former is taxed at much higher rates. Pot has kicked about $45 million into tax coffers since it became legal this year and is projected to come in between $60 million and $70 million by year’s end. Murders in the Denver area, where most pot sales take place, are down 42% (so is violent crime overall, though at a lower rate) and property crime is down 11.5%.
There’s more bad news for alarmists: Pot use by teenagers in Colorado declined between 2001, when the state legalized medical marijuana, and 2013, the last full year for which data are available. When medical marijuana was introduced, critics worried that any form of legalized pot would increase usage among kids, but the reverse happened. It remains to be seen if that trend continues in the face of legal recreational pot, but Colorado teens already use dope at lower rates than the national average. So much for the Rocky Mountain High state.
Yet Colorado pols are in good company in harshing on legal weed. The recovering addict and former congressman Patrick Kennedy heads up SAM (which stands for “Safe Alternatives to Marijuana”) and categorically argues, “we cannot promote a comprehensive system of mental health treatment and marijuana legalization.”
Researchers who find that regular marijuana use among teenagers correlates with mental problems, academic failure and other bad outcomes get plenty of ink, even though such studies fail to show causation. Underperforming students and kids with problems abuse alcohol and smoke cigarettes at higher rates, after all. In any case, even advocates of legalization argue that teens shouldn’t be smoking pot any more than they should be drinking. Given its pariah status for decades, it’s not surprising that the science is both unsettled and highly politicized.
Will legalizing pot increase access to a drug law enforcement officials concede has long been readily available to high schoolers? “Criminalizing cannabis for adults has little if any impact on reducing teens’ access or consumption of the plant,” argues the pro-legalization group NORML, a claim supported by declining teen use rates during Colorado’s experience with medical marijuana. Certainly, pot merchants who are registered with and regulated by the state are more likely to check IDs than your friendly neighborhood black-market dealer.
Cont -
http://time.com/3514137/marijuana-legalization-colorado-new-normal/
